Like every other type of intervention, Speech and Language Therapy needs to be accountable. It is not sufficient that you ‘have a Speech and Language therapist’ or a pupil has ‘seen as Speech and Language therapist’. The impact of assessment, intervention and training should have a measurable effect on a pupil’s well-being, their access to the curriculum and most importantly their functional communication.
With school budget cuts hitting the headlines it is more important than ever to know the money you are spending is delivering real, measurable impact on pupil’s achievement levels and their well being.
If the answer is no or I’m not sure – it might be time to ask your Speech and language therapist some difficult questions. Gathering regular feedback on how well pupils have developed in therapy is important in enabling teachers to and provide the right level of challenge in future lessons. It is also integral to budget planning for pupils with SEN. Before you begin, there may be things you haven’t considered when buying in extra Speech and Language therapy. There are some useful case studies here from the communication trust which may help you.
Do you have a system in place to know which children are more likely to have speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) ? Do you rely on the expertise of staff within the school?
You may have internal systems to support the identification of pupils with SLCN, but you should also ask your Speech and Language therapy service to help you with this. After screening, you should know the threshold scores that qualify a pupil for a referral to a Speech and Language Therapist
The therapist should guide your expectations based on their evaluation of the pupil’s ability. The parents will also have their priorities which may not directly impact achievements levels across the curriculum. So, you must balance parental expectations with teachers and therapists prerogatives.
Speech and Language Therapists, like all educators, are accountable for pupil outcomes. Therefore, data-based decision making, including gathering and interpreting data with individual students, as well as overall program evaluation are essential responsibilities.
Targets should be set collaboratively with the teaching staff, parents (carers) and the pupil. Targets should also need to be established before the course of therapy begins.
Planning for discharge from therapy should be discussed in the initial target setting meeting in order to manage expectations of those involved with the pupil.
Of course, pupil progress and priorities can change during therapy. But, an initial discussion of “how we know when the treatment has been successful” is not only useful but necessary.
Speech and language therapy service should monitor the effectiveness of each intervention undertaken and review each case where the anticipated results are not materialising, and implement alternative measures where appropriate to do. Whether targeted intervention or direct therapy, all our approaches should be based on substantial evidence; pre and post tests would be recommended for any targeted interventions, so pupils are accurately identified and progress measured.
Regular quantitative tracking of pupil progress is extremely useful and can be achieved through using systems like Mable.
This enables you to be positive that the speech and language (S&L) approaches are meeting needs and are impactful.
When delegating work to others, speech and language therapists have a legal responsibility to have determined the knowledge and skill level required to perform the appointed task.
That’s not all, speech and language therapists must operate within the following guidelines when appointing or assigning tasks to Teaching Assistants and other members of school staff:
An Ofsted representative recently told The Key that “inspectors do not assess the quality of individual interventions, just as they do not evaluate the quality of individual lessons.” Ofsted will be considering the impact of the intervention across the school. They will also want to know: why that response was chosen; what the impact has been and how the school is tracking the impact.
You need to choose a service that provides the above information for you. There is no point in paying for an external service that requires you to scramble around for data before and inspection. You should have open and transparent access to data for each pupil receiving Speech and Language therapy. The data available to you should include quantitative and qualitative information reporting the impact in agreed areas for students.
At the end of the day, the money you spend on intervention is imperative! It needs to demonstrate outcomes and prove it has meaningful, measurable impact.
Less experienced Speech and Language therapy staff will be cheaper, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they will be cost effective or impactful. A newly qualified Speech and Language therapist have a starting wage of around £20k and a Speech and language therapist with a much higher level of experience will expect anything up to £50k. This document provides a rough outline of salary expectations for Speech and Language therapists in the NHS.
However ambitious, a newly qualified therapist will require more time for supervision from senior staff and planning therapy and writing reports. Think of them like NQTs and consider the level of support they are provided within your school. Are you able to allow for this?
Ultimately, The cost of intervention needs to reflect in pupil outcome data so make sure you choose a service that can quantifiably produce this data as you require it.